Fascinating work, but frustrating because of growing distance between top management and people doing the work. - Publishing Cengage Employee Review

2.0
Sep 21, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You are part of the information industry, which is undergoing incredible change. This provides many opportunities to learn new skills.

Cons

The company is having difficulty adapting to the changes that have occurred and are occurring in information publishing. Most top people learned the publishing business in a print world and are continually behind the curve with regard to how end users access and use information. Top managers also talk mostly amongst themselves--communication with the workforce is mostly top-down and suggestions from the people doing the work get lip service at best. Ultimately it is a very frustrating place to work for any length of time.

Explore other reviews about Cengage

1.0
Jul 13, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The individuals below the management level are good people, with some good people at management but C-Suite is horrible.

Cons

C-Suite hides their plans under corporate speak. Cengage was a family owned private company and they sold and ever since then has had, debt, schemes to shuffle and restructure debt while implementing RIFs after RIFs after RIFs...never ending and amazingly has been in increased this last year. From their actions it's outsource as much as you can of company operations and squeeze value from Intellectual Property. Look how many times they've renamed themselves. They had a CTO join for about a month or two until she realized it was a role with no team, no authority and left. The CEO is amazing at spin, you hear "great, great, great" corporate speak as the reality on the ground is "this failed, that failed..what!? they're gone!...what they moved that department offshore!...what!? that department is now a vendor relationship...oh we're not DEI focused because the wind changed". The trend is contraction not expansion, no ground breaking innovation. My jaded view from college on expensive books has only grew since I see how the sausage is made.

3
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All